Beirut-based Abbout Productions, led by Georges Schoucair and Myriam Sassine, will be celebrated by the Locarno Film Festival with its Raimondo Rezzonico Award dedicated to producers who epitomize the indie ethos.
Schoucair founded Abbout Productions in 2004 with Sassine joining as lead producer in 2010. They have been nurturing a network of Lebanese and Arab filmmakers amid difficult and often catastrophic circumstances, fighting to keep indie cinema alive in the region by shepherding a wide range of Arab and Lebanese feature films and launching them internationally.
Films produced by Schoucair and Sassine in recent years include “Costa Brava, Lebanon” (Venice Orizzonti, 2021); “Memory Box” (Berlinale Competition, 2021) and other works by local filmmakers such as Ahmad Ghossein, Mohamed Malas, Ghassan Salhab, Oualid Mouannes, Cyril Aris, Ely Dagher, Rana Eid and Myriam El Hajj, whose “Diaries From Lebanon” premiered in Berlinale Panorama in 2024.
Schoucair and Sassine have also co-produced several award-winning international films through their company Schortcut Films supporting directors such as Alain Gomis, Kaouther Ben Hania, Lucrecia Martel and Elia Suleiman, among others.
Schoucair has also been instrumental to the reopening last December of Beirut’s beloved Metropolis Cinema, championed by Lebanese filmmakers as an indie cinema beacon amid bombings, despair and dysfunction. Sassine is the co-founder of the Maskoon Fantastic Film Festival, the Arab region’s only genre film festival in the Arab region, and is actively engaged in film training initiatives and industry events. Since 2021, she has managed Aflamuna Connection, a Lebanese co-production platform for Arab filmmakers.
“The films Abbout have produced are a sign of a society that is vital, alive, and continues to look to the future with dogged confidence,” said Locarno artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro in a statement.
“Through their films, Georges and Myriam have been able to tell the story of a country able to come to terms with its history while simultaneously imagining a layered and multifaceted Lebanese identity,” he added. “They have also launched a great many new talents in front of and behind the camera, helping to give Lebanon a new face, allowing it to meet its potential, and offering a complex portrait of the country that goes far beyond the trivializations of the violence of war. They have worked tirelessly in the pursuit of a fertile and generous dialogue.”
Schoucair and Sassine will receive the Raimondo Rezzonico Award in Locarno’s 8,000 seat open-air Piazza Grande on Aug. 7. They will also be presenting “Costa Brava, Lebanon” by Mounia Akl and “Memory Box” by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige as part of a dedicated mini-retro, and will also hold a public conversation on Aug. 8.
Previous winners of the Locarno award include French producer Marianne Slot and U.S. producers Jason Blum and Stacey Sher.
The 78th Locarno Film Festival will run Aug. 6-16.
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